[PD] latency issue

[Bjørn Nielsen]

> There is no audio software without latency.  The lowest that is feasible on
> Mac OS X is probably 4ms.   Once you factor in distance and speed of sound,
> then you might see that 20ms of latency isn't really all that much.

Yeah, sorry that I said there was no latency, I do know that every
software needs to process. What I meant to say was that the latency
while recording was so low in fx Pro Tools, that I don't hear it. That
is not the case with PD.

> 20ms * 343m/s = 7.546m
>
> So if you are 7.5m away from one of your band mates, there will 20ms of
> latency just from the sound travelling thru the air.

This is of couse a correct calculation, but never the reality. I never
stand more than maximum a couple of meters from my own amplifier, or
else I will lose the timing if I hear my own sound with latency. And
if you play at stages so large, that you are 7-8 meters from the
drummer or other musicians, then you will almost always have their
sound in your personal monitors, just a few meters from you.
I actually had a problem some few times, when I tried to play together
with the band, while making sound from the mixingdesk 10 meters from
the stage. That is not recommendable (though you can do it with
headphones).

So my point is here, that a realtime latency (including processing,
ad/da conversion and traveling time thru air) above ca. 15-20ms is a
real problem for the timing while playing together with a band. It can
seems like in some of the comments on this list, that is neglected
that the ultralow latency is making a difference and that you are on
the wrong track if you wan't to use PD for that purpose. But I see
very big potential and fun in doing this. I have skipped must of my
analog effects, and instead use some real messy and funny delayeffects
in pd.

I would still find it very interesting if anybody on list knows if it
you can lower pd latency with better hardware to the unhearable or if
11ms (in the pd settings) is the lower barrier?